Last month, I ran out of space before I could mention one thing that jumped out at me right away about our BAS conference in San Diego: at least eight

"We gave it to the facilities guys, and they couldn't figure it out. We gave it to the IT guys, and they automated the bathrooms."
That sounds like a worst-case scenario that Ken Sinclair might've written a few years ago in his column, doesn't it?

Let's start off with a couple of items of interest you might've missed earlier this year, ranging from the courtroom to what sounds more like science fiction than science.

One sure-fire way to beat the summer heat: stay inside and clean out the list of bookmarks on your computer. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

When Howard McKew started talking to us about reviving a one-day commissioning and TAB seminar for owners, I tossed around a few titles and thought that headline might make a good one.

We have breaking news for you this month, in the form of a limited-space opportunity available to registrants for our gathering this fall in San Diego.

The missus and I enjoy the movies, but we find ourselves watching fewer and fewer of them in the movie theater. Why? Well, the inappropriate talking, the prices, and the having your seatback kicked by some unrepentant kid haven't helped. Heck, if I could find a used theater-quality popcorn popper and then retrofit our sofa with a cupholder, we might never leave the house.

Manufacturers of humidification equipment stock their websites with plenty of info about the several types of product lines out there. But what resources can a designer find on the Internet to create the right system for the application at hand? Interested engineers can use a plethora of online options, downloadable and otherwise, to help them get the right amount of moisture into the right space in the right way.

Stacking the deck isn't always cheating. With the help of our friend Paul Ehrlich, P.E., of the Building Intelligence Group, our first-ever Building Automation Conference offered a slew of industry "face cards" to provide some presentation firepower. Beforehand, and in Baltimore, Jessica Yamin and the rest of our conference staff promoted and organized what really did amount to a good deal for attendees. And ultimately - to borrow from the ever-popular poker terminology - we drew an ace "on the river" when about 150 of you shuffled in to energize the conference.

As far as song titles go, you can't get much more generic than "We Belong Together." In fact, a quick search of www.allmusic.com reveals at least 50 recording artists who have released a song with that title, and I'd bet almost all of those are separate compositions. Personally, I prefer Rickie Lee Jones' version, but if you take the title and apply a typical late-winter head cold, then you get where we're headed this month: the new ES Blog at http://blog.esmagazine.com.